Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T21:39:09.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Constituent Order and Acceptability

from Part II - Experimental Studies of Specific Phenomena

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2021

Grant Goodall
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Get access

Summary

The relation between the constituent order of a sentence and its acceptability score is a complex one. This is due to the fact that both the crucial independent variable, constituent order, and the dependent one, acceptability judgments, are inherently multifactorial. This contribution seeks to disentangle this relation by (i) enumerating the factors that contribute to the ordering of constituents in non-canonical orders, i.e. orders that deviate from the unmarked order of a given language, (ii) giving an explanation of how these factors interact in terms of the notion of contextual licensing, and (iii) providing a survey of the experimental evidence accrued so far both in favor of and against such an explanation for a number of different constructions. An outlook on possibilities for further research concludes the chapter.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aissen, J. (1999). Markedness and subject choice in Optimality Theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 17(4), 673711.Google Scholar
Altmann, H. (1981). Formen der “Herausstellung” im Deutschen: Rechtsversetzung, Linksversetzung, Freies Thema und verwandte Konstruktionen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Averintseva-Klisch, M. (2009). Rechte Satzperipherie im Diskurs: NP-Rechtsversetzung im Deutschen. Tübingen: Stauffenberg.Google Scholar
Bader, M. (1999). Die Verarbeitung von Subjekt-Objekt-Ambiguitäten im Kontext. In Proceedings der 4. Fachtagung der Gesellschaft für Kognitionswissenschaft. St. Augustin: Infix.Google Scholar
Bader, M. & Häussler, J. (2010). Toward a model of grammaticality judgments. Journal of Linguistics, 46, 273330.Google Scholar
Bader, M. & Portele, Y. (2018). Givenness licenses object-first order in German. Talk presented at CGSW 2018 Göttingen.Google Scholar
Battistella, E. (1996). The Logic of Markedness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bayer, J. & Marslen-Wilson, W. (1992). Configurationality in the light of language comprehension: The order of arguments in German. Manuscript, University of Konstanz.Google Scholar
Behaghel, O. (1909). Beziehungen zwischen Umfang und Reihenfolge von Satzgliedern. Indogermanische Forschungen, 25, 110142.Google Scholar
Birner, B. J. (1996). The Discourse Function of Inversion in English. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bojar, O., Semecky, J., Vasishth, S., & Kruijff-Korbayova, I. (2004). Processing noncanonical word order in Czech. Poster presented at conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, September 2004, Aix-en-Provence, France (AM-LaP 2004).Google Scholar
Bornkessel, I. & Schlesewsky, M. (2006). The role of contrast in the local licensing of Scrambling in German: Evidence from online comprehension. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 18(1), 143.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. (1994). Locative inversion and the architecture of Universal Grammar. Language, 70(1), 72131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bresnan, J., Cueni, A., Nikitina, T., & Baayen, R. H. (2007). Predicting the dative alternation. In Bouma, G., Krämer, I., & Zwarts, J., eds., Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science, pp. 6994.Google Scholar
Brown, M., Savova, V., & Gibson, E. (2012). Syntax encodes information structure: Evidence from on-line reading comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 66(1), 194209.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. L. (1976). Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In Li, C. N., ed., Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press, pp. 2555.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1971). Deep structure, surface structure and semantic interpretation. In Steinberg, D. & Jakobovits, L., eds., Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. & Haviland, S. (1977). Comprehension and the given-new contract. In Freedle, R., ed., Disourse Production and Comprehension. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 140.Google Scholar
Clifton, C. J. & Frazier, L. (1986). The use of syntactic information in filling gaps. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 15(3), 209224.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clifton, C. J. & Frazier, L. (2004). Should given information come before new? Yes and no. Memory & Cognition, 32(6), 886895.Google Scholar
Cowart, W. (1997). Experimental Syntax. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
DeVeaugh-Geiss, J., Tönnis, S., Onea, E., & Zimmermann, M. (2018). That’s not quite it: An experimental investigation of (non-)exhaustivity in clefts. Semantics & Pragmatics, 11(3). DOI:10.3765/sp.11.3Google Scholar
Ebert, C. (2009). Quantificational Topics: A Scopal Treatment of Exceptional Wide Scope Phenomena (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 86). Heidelberg: Springer.Google Scholar
Fanselow, G. & Frisch, S. (2006). Effects of processing difficulty on judgments of acceptability. In Fanselow, G., Féry, C., Vogel, R., & Schlesewsky, M., eds., Gradience in Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 291316.Google Scholar
Fanselow, G., Lenertová, D., & Weskott, T. (2008). Studies on the acceptability of object movement to Spec,CP. In Steube, A., ed., The Discourse Potential of Underspecified Structures. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 413438.Google Scholar
Fanselow, G. & Weskott, T. (2010). A short note on long movement in German. Linguistische Berichte, 222, 129140.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. D. (1978). Parsing strategies and constraints on transformations. Linguistic Inquiry, 9, 427473.Google Scholar
Frey, W. (1993). Syntaktische Bedingungen für die semantische Interpretation: über Bindung, implizite Argumente, und Skopus (Studia Grammatica, 35). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
Gärtner, H.-M. & Steinbach, M. (2003). What do reduced pronomnals reveal about the syntax of Dutch and German? Part I: Clause-internal positions. Linguistische Berichte, 195, 257294.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. (1998). Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition, 68(1), 176.Google Scholar
Haider, H. (1993). Deutsche Syntax – generativ. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Haider, H. & Rosengren, I. (1998). Scrambling (Sprache and Pragmatik, 49). Lund: Lund University.Google Scholar
Haider, H. & Rosengren, I. (2003). Scrambling: Nontriggered chain formation in OV languages. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 15(3), 203267.Google Scholar
Hartmann, J., Jäger, M., Kehl, A., Konietzko, A., & Winkler, S., eds. (2018). Freezing: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Domains. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 387402.Google Scholar
Häussler, J., Mucha, A., Schmidt, A., Weskott, T., & Wierzba, M. (2019). Experimenting with Lurchi: V2 and agreement violations in poetic contexts. In Brown, J. M. M., Wierzba, M., & Schmidt, A., eds., Of Trees and Birds: A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow. Potsdam: Potsdam University Press, pp. 307321.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1994). A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haywood, S. L., Pickering, M. J., & Branigan, H. P. (2005). Do speakers avoid ambiguities during dialogue? Psychological Science, 16(5), 362366.Google Scholar
Hemforth, B. (1993). Kognitives Parsing–Repräsentation und Verarbeitung sprachlichen Wissens. St. Augustin:Infix.Google Scholar
Höhle, T. N. (1982). Explikationen für “normale Betonung” und “normale Wortstellung.” In Abraham, W., ed., Satzglieder im Deutschen. Tübingen: Narr, pp. 75153.Google Scholar
Hörberg, T. (2016). Probabilistic and prominence-driven incremental argument interpretation in Swedish. Doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University.Google Scholar
Hörnig, R., Oberauer, K., & Weidenfeld, A. (2005). Two principles of premise integration in spatial reasoning. Memory & Cognition, 33(1), 131139.Google Scholar
Hörnig, R., Weskott, T., Kliegl, R., & Fanselow, G. (2006). Word order variation in spatial descriptions with adverbs. Memory & Cognition, 34(5), 11831192.Google Scholar
Jacobs, J. (1997). I-Topikalisierung. Linguistische Berichte, 168, 91133.Google Scholar
Kaan, E. (1996). Processing Subject–Object-Ambiguities in Dutch. Groningen Dissertations in Linguistics, 20, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.Google Scholar
Kaiser, E. & Trueswell, J. (2004). The role of discourse context in the processing of a flexible word-order language. Cognition, 94(2), 113147.Google Scholar
Keller, F. (2000). Gradience in grammar: Experimental and computational aspects of degrees of grammaticality. Doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Kizach, J. (2015). Animacy and the ordering of postverbal prepositional phrases in Danish. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 47(2), 121.Google Scholar
Kleemann-Krämer, A., Kügler, F., & Pötzl, S. (2015). Zur Anbindung extraponierter PPen an ihre Bezugsstruktur. In Vinckel-Roisin, H., ed., Das Nachfeld im Deutschen: Theorie und Empirie. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 299318.Google Scholar
Konietzko, A. (2018). Heavy NP shift in context: On the interaction of information structure and subextraction from shifted constituents. In Hartmann, J., Jäger, M., Kehl, A., Konietzko, A., & Winkler, S., eds., Freezing: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Domains. Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, pp. 387402.Google Scholar
Lenerz, J. (1977). Zur Abfolge nominaler Satzglieder im Deutschen. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M. (1981). The speaker’s linearization problem. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B 295, 305315.Google Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Meng, M. (1998). Kognitive Sprachverarbeitung: Rekonstruktion syntaktischer Strukturen beim Lesen. Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Müller, G. (1999). Optimality, markedness, and word order in German. Linguistics, 37, 777818.Google Scholar
Müller, G. (2001). Optionality in Optimality-Theoretic syntax. In Cheng, L. & Sybesma, R., eds., The Second Glot International State-of-the-Article Book. Berlin: Mouton, pp. 289312.Google Scholar
Namboodiripad, S. (2017). An experimental approach to variation and variability in constituent order. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Neeleman, A. (1994). Complex Predicates. Utrecht: Led.Google Scholar
Nikanne, U. (2017). Finite sentences in Finnish: Word order, morphol- ogy, and information structure. In Bailey, L. R. & Sheehan, M., eds., Order and Structure in Syntax I: Word Order and Syntactic Structure. Berlin: Language Science Press, pp. 6997.Google Scholar
Pechmann, T., Uszkoreit, H., Engelkamp, J., & Zerbst, D. (1994). Word order in the German Middlefield. Computerlinguistik an der Univerität des Saarlandes, 43.Google Scholar
Postal, P. M. (1971). Cross-over Phenomena. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Prince, E. F. (1999). How not to mark topics: “Topicalization” in English and Yiddish. Texas Linguistics Forum. Austin: University of Texas, Ch. 8.Google Scholar
Roberts, C. (1996). Information structure: Towards an integrated theory of pragmatics. In Yoon, J. H. & Kathol, A., eds., Papers in Semantics (OSU Working Papers in Linguistics, 49). Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Ross, J. R. (1967). Constraints on variables in syntax. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. & Keller, F. (2005). Gradience in linguistic data. Lingua, 115, 14971524.Google Scholar
Scheepers, C. & Rummer, R. (1999). Genre-specific parsing: Non-additive influences of metrical stress pattern on sentence processing. Talk held at KogWis (Fachtagung der Gesellschaft für Kognitionswissenschaft) in Leipzig.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, R. C. (1973). Presuppositions. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2, 447457.Google Scholar
Sternefeld, W. (2000). Semantic vs. syntactic reconstruction. Unpublished manuscript, University of Tübingen.Google Scholar
Steube, A. (2001). Grammatik und Pragmatik von Hutkonturen. Linguistische Arbeitsberichte, 77, 729. Leipzig University.Google Scholar
Temme, A. & Verhoeven, E. (2016). Verb class, case, and order: A crosslinguistic experiment on non-nominative experiencers. Linguistics, 54(4), 769813.Google Scholar
Vasishth, S. (2004). Discourse context and word order preferences in Hindi. Yearbook of South Asian Languages. New Delhi and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 113128.Google Scholar
Vilkuna, M. (1989). Free Word Order in Finnish: Its Syntax and Discourse Functions. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.Google Scholar
Vinckel-Roisin, H., ed. (2015). Das Nachfeld im Deutschen: Theorie und Empirie. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Vogel, R. (2018). Sociocultural determinants of grammatical taboos in German. In Liashchova, L., ed., The Explicit and the Implicit in Language and Speech. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 116153.Google Scholar
Ward, G. & Birner, B. (2004). Information structure and non-canonical syntax. In Horn, L. R. & Ward, G., eds., The Handbook of Pragmatics. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 153174.Google Scholar
Wasow, T. (2002). Postverbal Behavior. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Weskott, T. (2003). Information structure as a processing guide: The left periphery of German verb-second sentences an its interpretation in context. Doctoral dissertation, University of Leipzig.Google Scholar
Weskott, T., Hörnig, R., Fanselow, G., & Kliegl, R. (2011). Contextual licensing of marked OVS word order in German. Linguistische Berichte, 225, 318.Google Scholar
Weskott, T., Hörnig, R., & Webelhuth, G. (2019). On the contextual licensing of English locative inversion and topicalization. In Featherston, S., Hörnig, R., von Wietersheim, S., & Winkler, S., eds., Experiments in Focus: Information Structure and Semantic Processing. New York: De Gruyter, pp. 153182.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×